Sci-Fi Storm

A couple of casting updates…How To Get Away With Murder‘s Kendrick Sampson is joining the cast of The Flash for a multi-episode arc as Brainstorm, a TSA Agent who gains the meta-human power to read people’s thoughts – whether he wants to or not. He will first appear in the last episode before the Winter break.

Maggie Grace (Taken, Lost) will join Fear The Walking Dead as a series regular for the show’s fourth season. No details on the role are yet available.

You’ve seen this already, haven’t you? No? Well, now you can…Avengers: Infinity War is in theaters May 4th

George R.R. Martin’s SF-horror novella Nightflyers has been picked up for a 10-episode series by Syfy, according to the writer himself.

Syfy ordered up a pilot earlier this year, but apparently made the decision to go straight to series after seeing the script by Jeff Buhler (Jacob’s Ladder). Netflix will handle international viewers, and possibly also as a second-run domestic source.

Also according to Martin, the show is in pre-production/casting stages, but there is apparently already a cast selection made that “has pleased me more than I can possibly say,”, according to the Game Of Thrones scribe. But we will have to wait a little longer to find out who that is…

The supernatural thriller is set in the future on the eve of Earth’s destruction, a crew of explorers journey on the most advanced ship in the galaxy, The Nightflyer, to intercept a mysterious alien spacecraft that might hold the key to their survival. As the crew nears their destination, they discover that the ship’s artificial intelligence and never-seen captain may be steering them into deadly and unspeakable horrors deep in the dark reaches of space.

The Doctor Who episode “Shada” is legendary…unlike other incomplete episodes, which were due to the BBC purging the film archives of some of the original masters, Shada was never completed. The final episode of the 17th season, starring Tom Baker and written by Douglas Adams, had production canceled part way through due to a strike at the BBC. When the strike ended, the schedule had slipped too far into the holiday programming production time and ultimately it was never resumed. Douglas Adams was reportedly fine with the episode remaining in the annals of legend, unhappy with the script in the end.

Since then, the episode was released in its incomplete form with some narration to fill in the missing parts, and also retooled as an audio drama for the Eighth Doctor.

Now the original is getting the BBC’s latest method of filling in lost episodes – by animating them! Last year, they restored Patrick Troughton’s debut episode, [sfs=1582]”The Power Of The Daleks”[/sfs], by reconstructing the missing parts with animation. As an added bonus, not only does Tom Baker lend his voice to the animated segments, but also filmed a new segment with an appearance by K-9!

The episode follows the Doctor and Romana as they are called to Cambridge by Dr. Chronotis, a “retired” Time Lord who holds the key to the location of Shada, the prison planet of the Time Lords. A alien genius, Skagra, wants the location to be able to harness the collective intellect of the most notorious criminals in the universe so that he may take over, well, everything.

The new release is available today on iTunes (at least in the UK – I don’t see it in the iTunes store in the US), and a DVD release in the UK on December 4th and the [sfs=1622]US on January 8th[/sfs].

Some holiday weekend TidBits…

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is hitting all the tracking target with hyperspace speeds, and word on the street is that a $200 million opening weekend is possible…and check out this 30 second spot, “Tempt”…

On the other side of the SF franchise universe, one which has been spoken of for decades, Dune is making rumblings again, this time from Oscar-nominated director Denis Villeneuve himself. In a Deadline Hollywood interview mostly about Blade Runner 2049, at the end he mentions how much he loved the book and wants to bring a new adaptation to the big screen. He mentions the 1984 David Lynch movie, but says it didn’t match his own vision of one of his favorite books, and he’d like to bring that vision to the big screen.

And lastly, this past week director Colin Trevorrow gave us a tease of the upcoming Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – a six second video showing Owen Brady (Chris Pratt) getting chummy with a baby Velociraptor…apparently he’s gotten over what happened with them last time…

From our Jurassic family to yours. @FilmBayona @PrattPrattPratt @BryceDHoward @LeDoctor #FALLENKINGDOM pic.twitter.com/KiR3et9Vx1

— Colin Trevorrow (@colintrevorrow) November 22, 2017

Check out the U.S. trailer for A Wrinkle In Time, Disney’s new adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel about a 13 year old girl, her 5 year old prodigy brother, and her classmate as they are transported through time and space…

In theaters March 9th, 2018

What’s better than seeing the Doctor in the annual Christmas special? Seeing TWO of them!

Find out if the magic is coming back when the students of Brakebills return for Season 3 of The Magicians on January 10th, 2018 at 9/8c on SYFY!

As we reported last week, Amazon was on the hunt for a mega-franchise, and it appears they’ve got one – and paid a handsome price for it.

Reports are in that Amazon has purchased the TV rights to The Lord Of The Rings – or at least some portion of stories from Middle-earth – for what may be close to $250 million just for the rights, and they’ve made a multi-season commitment already. It is expected a worth production could cost $100-150 million per season. The deal also includes a potential spin-off series.

The twist to the story is that it will not simply be a remake of the movies, but instead cover some period before the time of The Lord Of The Rings. It is not certain if this means it will be set in the time between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, or delve further back into the expansive mythology laid out by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Everyone wants a streaming service – and they need content to drive it…Disney is no different on that bandwagon, and head mouse Bob Iger announced today that one of the original series planned for their service is a live-action Star Wars series.

No real details were given – it was mentioned along with content based on other franchises such as Marvel, Monsters, Inc., and High School Musical – but speculation is growing that they might revive the long dormant live-action series that Lucas touted and we last heard might get life at ABC.

We’re probably some distance away from such a show, so there is plenty of time to speculate and dream…